Dirt 3’s VIP Pass forcing PS3 owners to play offline

Project Ten-Dollar, Online Pass, inconvenient junk, whatever you want to call it there has been a decent amount of backlash to developers that have included these codes in their games that limit gamers buying used games or renting titles from accessing the full title. Now hear is the icing on the cake for some gamers, those who purchase DiRT 3 right now on the PlayStation 3 cannot play their game online even if they bought it new.

The reason for this is because Sony’s PlayStation Store is still down and there is no way to redeem these online pass codes. Another title had this same issue, Mortal Kombat but thankfully Warner Bros. waived anyone from having to redeem their pass for the next few weeks. CodeMasters on the other hand isn’t doing that.

Speaking with Eurogamer, a Codemasters representative said: “We’ve looked into doing something similar for Dirt 3 but it’s not technically possible. It’s hard-coded into the game.” Meaning that it would require the developers to patch the game to remove the VIP pass requirement which they believe would take longer than waiting for the PlayStation Store to come online. So… you punish your paying customers in an effort to reduce used game sales, only now DiRT 3 owners on the PS3 may just trade your title in and buy something else, creating a larger used market for your title. Sounds like a win right there…